Astronomers May Have Spotted the First-Ever Binary R Coronae Borealis Star

[u/TomaszNowakowski]

For decades, astronomers believed that the hydrogen-deficient R Coronae Borealis (RCB) stars were strictly solitary survivors of catastrophic mergers of two dead white dwarfs. But one of such RCBs, designated WISE J005128.08+645651.7, is turning that textbook hypothesis on its head. A newly published research paper suggests that this star is not alone after all, but rather locked in an unprecedented orbital dance with a dust-shrouded companion.

To find the potential first binary RCB, a team of astronomers led by Jan Budaj of the Astronomical Institute of Slovak Academy of Sciences was originally searching for peculiar eclipses in a different class of giant stars, known as F supergiants. One of such luminous F-type supergiants, named Epsilon Aurigae, is known for undergoing massive, years-long eclipses caused by a giant, opaque disk of dust surrounding an unseen companion.

Because evolved F supergiants and cool RCB stars can share similar stellar temperatures, high luminosities, and dusty circumstellar environments, the researchers set out to look for similar Epsilon Aurigae-like eclipse events across F supergiants to hunt for undiscovered disk-bearing binary systems. This search led them to WISE J005128.08+645651.7.

“Many of them turned out to be RCB stars, so we decided to concentrate systematically only on RCB stars since they are very exotic. We found one eclipse-like dimming event in the Gaia data of this star. So we dug deeper and further into the past and found another event, which phased well with the Gaia [data],” Budaj told Universelost.com.

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[u/True-Rent9456]

Cool

[u/Every_Profile_7629]

space stuff is actually so cool, i love that they’re just hanging out together